


Transmutation

by entanglednow



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-01
Updated: 2011-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 21:25:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow





	Transmutation

Dean can't quite remember what he was doing?

Sam's not here, he must have gone out for...something.

Gabriel has a streak of oil on the side of his nose, left there by an errant swipe of hand. He's eyeing the pieces of a gun, laid on the table, like he doesn't have a clue what he's doing here. He gets that look a lot. Dean tries to be more amused than offended.

After a second Gabriel picks up a cloth, and laughs quietly.

"Do you ever get that thing, like anti-deja-vu. Where you know you've done something a million times, but suddenly you have no idea what you're doing?"

Dean snorts. "No."

"Figures," Gabriel says bitterly.

"Must be all those head injuries," Dean offers. "We're only human after all."

Gabriel laughs, like he knows something funny that Dean doesn't. Then swears when a spring goes rolling off the table, to land in the cheap pile of the carpet.

Dean can just see the curling edge of a scar under the collar of Gabriel's shirt. A messy thing that had started out as badly ripped up flesh. Dean knows because he stitched it himself. He remembers that there had been blood everywhere, fingers slippery with it and Gabriel had been slurring curses at him, in a language he didn't understand. Face pale as the grave. He'd been damn near certain Gabriel was going to die. The man had been so fucking hard to hold down, stronger than he had any right to be for someone so small.

Dean thinks - he thinks it had taken hours to stop the bleeding. Though he knows how that works, how time stretches out until it feels like forever, hands cramping, neck aching, eyes gone tight and dry. Gabriel had stopped struggling eventually and just watched him, like he couldn't quite believe he was real.

Gabriel has all the pieces back on the table, shaking his head.

"What if you had to save someone but you didn't know how. If you had to save someone who wasn't like you, made of pieces you couldn't touch, or see, or fix..." Gabriel frowns, voice trailing off. He does that a lot too, loses the thread of whatever mad thing he's saying.

"Like a ghost?" Dean asks over the top of his bottle.

"No." Gabriel lets the word hang. Though there's an uncertainty to it, like he isn't quite sure what he does mean.

"Like what then?"

Gabriel shakes his head, like he doesn't know how to explain. He tilts his head at Dean, like maybe he has the answer.

"What do you mean?" Dean asks.

Gabriel frowns. "I don't know."

He turns his head and stares down the barrel he's cleaning, like he has no idea where it came from. The moment hangs for seconds that go on forever, and then he slowly starts cleaning again.

Dean sighs.

"You'd do the best you could, I guess. The only way you knew how."

Gabriel snorts, quick, instinctive. It's familiar enough that Dean pulls another beer out of the fridge, sets it down on the table.

When he wakes up, he doesn't remember a thing.


End file.
